Services you can count on

What you should expect

Burlington already funds customer-service and operations dashboards. I'll push to make their service measures public and Ward 6-filterable — snow completion, sweeping dates, park work orders, and bylaw response times — instead of building a duplicate reporting system.

And the raw data should be open, not just dashboarded. Burlington's open data portal publishes park and facility inventories today, but no service-request data — Kitchener, Ottawa, and Toronto all publish 311-style requests residents can check themselves. I'll move to add park maintenance, litter and garbage-can pickup in parks, and tree work orders to the portal the City already runs. One caveat, stated plainly: curbside garbage collection is Halton Region's service, not City Council's — this covers the cans, washrooms, and grounds inside City parks.

★ Ward 6 Service Scorecard

• Every quarter: how snow went that season, sweeping finished by zone, park upkeep at the major parks, what bylaw files are stuck on, and where the windrow program stands. Written so you can read it. Not a separate report after every storm.
• From real numbers: City data when we have it. If Ward 6 numbers don't exist yet, I'll say so and ask staff for them.
• Cost: no new budget line proposed. Use the City dashboards already being funded; staff must scope any new ward filtering, privacy review, or data extraction.

Residents don't need another citywide brochure. They need transparency and results.

Day-to-day tools

Community safety — safe streets and quiet nights

Most of what a councillor can actually do for safety runs through streets and standards: school routes, lighting, traffic calming, and working with Halton police. It's all in this plan — here it is in one place.

• School-route safety each fall and after major storms — plow, sweep, crosswalks, visibility.
• Traffic calming, published honestly — warranted, scheduled, installed, or delayed, by street, in the quarterly scorecard.
• Dark roads and outages — a priority list for collectors, brought to Council.
• Bus stops — which Ward 6 stops still need lighting or a shelter.
• Employment lands — noise and truck traffic around Appleby, the 407, and Palladium, in the quarterly report.
• Loud cars and bikes — first a staff options scan, with staff time scoped. If Council funds a small data-only camera trial, peer cities put that in the ~$50K–$200K range — and still need provincial rules before anyone talks tickets. The who-to-call card will point people to Halton police Project Noisemaker and Road Watch.

Rural Ward 6 — one plan, not scattered mentions

North of Dundas is half this ward. These commitments live across the platform — here is the rural file in one place.

• The Escarpment Loop — bundle the rural cycling and walking segments already in the City's mobility plan into one named program, phased with road resurfacing. Details on the Parks & Recreation page.
• Road and culvert closures, communicated — when a north collector closes, publish a ward map and an ETA, not a mystery detour.
• Rural roads in the scorecard — winter service and resurfacing on rural collectors tracked in the same quarterly report as urban streets.
• Vehicle and motorcycle noise — the options scan above covers the rural corridors where it's worst.
• Flooding and drainage — the stormwater push below matters most where ditches and culverts are the whole drainage system.
• Who-to-call clarity — well water testing is Halton Region, road maintenance is the City, and the one-pager says so.

How it rolls out

First 100 days

1. Publish the who-to-call card and the scorecard format
2. Publish the Ward 6 sweeping zone calendar
3. Host a core services town hall
4. Ask staff for Ward 6 snow, sweeping, parks, and bylaw numbers
5. Publish the first corridor priority list and school-route safety ask
6. Ask staff for the dig-deposit and ROW fee rules on active Ward 6 corridors
7. Sit down with City and Halton police on vehicle-noise options — data only, no fake tickets
8. Ask for the timeline on the stormwater user-fee study already committed in the 2026 budget
9. Ask staff to scope publishing park-maintenance and litter service requests on the City’s existing open data portal
10. Send the first quarterly Core Services Report

Stop cannibalizing road repair to fix flooding

Burlington flooded badly in 2014 and again in July 2024 — and to pay for storm fixes, the City cancelled its entire 2025 local road-resurfacing program. That's a broken funding model, not a one-off. The City's approved 2026 budget already commits to a stormwater user-fee feasibility study, and Oakville enacted its dedicated stormwater charge in 2025 ($60–$273 a year for homes, more for big paved lots). I'll champion finishing that study and putting a dedicated, fair stormwater charge on the table — with credits for rain gardens and permeable surfaces — so flood protection and road repair stop competing for the same dollar. Any revenue figure before the City's own study is a projection, and I'll label it that way.

Protect the fees we already charge

Permitted work on Walkers, Appleby, and Evergreen is subject to City fees and restoration securities. I'll publish a Ward 6 cost-recovery annex and push to enforce the rules we already have — not count refundable deposits as spendable revenue.

• Road-cut and lane fees — trench permits run about $555–$601 plus a per-metre charge; lane closures start around $112 plus a daily area charge by road class (2026 Rates & Fees).
• Restoration securities — refundable, project-specific liabilities the City can hold for about two years and draw on only if the road isn't finished right. They are protection, not operating revenue.
• Windrow user-pay — the program is estimated at $240K for up to 1,000 driveways. The City projects fees could cover about 47% under the 2026–27 model, but actual recovery depends on enrolment and subsidy uptake. Any expansion needs a clear user-pay business case.
• Private tree cash-in-lieu — $257.50 per replacement tree on the 2026 fee schedule. I'll track Ward 6 totals in the revenue annex.